Prevalence of Five Gang Structures in 201 Cities in the United States, 1992 and 1995 (ICPSR 2792)

The goal of this study was to provide useful data on how
street gang crime patterns (by amount and type of offense) relate to
common patterns of street gang structure, thus providing focused,
data-based guidelines for gang control and intervention. The data
collection consists of two components: (1) descriptions of cities'
gang activities taken from an earlier study of gang migration in 1992,
IMPACT OF GANG MIGRATION: EFFECTIVE RESPONSES BY LAW ENFORCEMENT
AGENCIES IN THE UNITED STAT... (more info)

The goal of this study was to provide useful data on how
street gang crime patterns (by amount and type of offense) relate to
common patterns of street gang structure, thus providing focused,
data-based guidelines for gang control and intervention. The data
collection consists of two components: (1) descriptions of cities'
gang activities taken from an earlier study of gang migration in 1992,
IMPACT OF GANG MIGRATION: EFFECTIVE RESPONSES BY LAW ENFORCEMENT
AGENCIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1992 (ICPSR 2570), and (2) gang
structure data from 1995 interviews with police agencies in a sample
of the same cities that responded to the 1992 survey. Information
taken from the 1992 study includes the year of gang emergence in the
city, numbers of active gangs and gang members, ethnic distribution of
gang members, numbers of gang homicides and "drive-bys" in 1991, state
in which the city is located, and population of the city. Information
from the 1995 gang structures survey provides detail on the ethnic
distributions of gangs, whether a predominant gang structure was
present, each gang structure's typical size, and the total number of
each of the five gang structures identified by the principal
investigators -- chronic traditional, emergent traditional, emergent
integrated, expanded integrated, and specialty integrated. City crime
information was collected on the spread of arrests, number of serious
arrests, volume and specialization of crime, arrest profile codes and
history, uniform crime rate compared to city population, ratio of
serious arrests to total arrests, and ratio of arrests to city
population.

Access Notes

These data are freely available.

Dataset(s)

Study Description

Citation

Klein, Malcolm, and Cheryl L. Maxson. PREVALENCE OF FIVE GANG STRUCTURES IN 201 CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1992 AND 1995. ICPSR02792-v1. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California [producer], 1996. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2000. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02792.v1

Methodology

Study Purpose:
The goal of this study was to provide useful data
on how street gang crime patterns (by amount and type of offense)
relate to common patterns of street gang structure, thus providing
focused, data-based guidelines for gang control and intervention. The
researchers utilized data from two sources to calculate estimates of
the national prevalence of various types of gang structures, and of
the perceived patterns of criminal activity associated with each
structure. While previous attempts to typologize gangs relied heavily
upon their crime patterns, these data describe gangs in relation to
their structural properties.

Study Design:
The data collection consists of two components:
(1) descriptions of cities' gang activities taken from an earlier
study of gang migration in 1992, IMPACT OF GANG MIGRATION: EFFECTIVE
RESPONSES BY LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1992
(ICPSR 2570), and (2) gang structures data from 1995 interviews with
the police agencies in a sample of the same cities that responded to
the 1992 survey. For the 1992 study, the researchers obtained
membership lists of gang investigator associations and solicited
candidate municipalities from law enforcement contacts across the
country. The primary agency responsible for policing each city was
identified from the 1991 National Directory of Law Enforcement
Administrators. If the municipality contracted police services to an
agency other than the local police department, this agency was
contacted instead. In order to learn more about the varieties of gang
types nationally, and how these might relate to different forms of
crime, the researchers administered the gang structures survey in 1995
to a sample of the same law enforcement agencies from the 1992
survey. First, the researchers faxed or mailed the descriptions of the
five types of gangs to the law enforcement officers. Then the law
enforcement officers were contacted for an interview. At the
beginning of the interview, the researchers ascertained that the
officers had reviewed the descriptions, since survey questions were
based on understanding the descriptions.

Sample:
Random sampling.

Data Source:

mailed surveys and telephone interviews

Description of Variables:
Information taken from the 1992 study included the
year of gang emergence in the city, numbers of active gangs and gang
members, ethnic distribution of gang members, numbers of gang
homicides and "drive-bys" in 1991, state in which the city is located,
and population of the city. Information from the 1995 gang structures
survey provides detail on the ethnic distributions of gangs, whether a
predominant gang structure was present, each gang structure's typical
size, and the total number of each of the five gang structures
identified by the principal investigators -- chronic traditional,
emergent traditional, emergent integrated, expanded integrated, and
specialty integrated. City crime information was collected on the
spread of arrests, number of serious arrests, volume and
specialization of crime, arrest profile codes and history, uniform
crime rate compared to city population, ratio of serious arrests to
total arrests, and ratio of arrests to city population.

Response Rates:
The response rate was 80 percent (201 cities).

Presence of Common Scales:
None

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Standardized missing values.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:2000-06-21

Version History:

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.